Afghanistan: Is It Really the End Game?

by Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy in Focus | Read article

When the Obama administration sent an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in 2009 as part of the “surge,” the goal was to secure the country’s southern provinces, suppress opium cultivation, and force the Taliban to give up on the war. Not only did the surge fail to impress the Taliban and its allies, it never stabilized the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Both are once again under the sway of the insurgency, and opium production has soared.  What the surge did manage was to spread the insurgency into formerly secure areas in the north and west.